Libertarians For Tyranny

I was reading Cato Institute fellow Tom Palmer’s blog yesterday and he had a roundup of posts from so-called “libertarian” bloggers who were mourning the death of Serbia’s former genocidial dictator Slobodan Milosevic. The first disgusting blog entry was from Lew Rockwell.com blogger Daniel McAdams who wrote:

Today’s apparent death of former Serbian president, Slobodan Milosevic bares the bloody fangs of the New World Order, a totalitarian construct of the United States and allies to fill in the post Cold War void:

“If we cannot convict you on our lies, we will at least make sure you don’t get out alive.”

Let us recall that Milosevic was captured — kidnapped — by the NWO shock troops in exchange for aid promised to a Serbia recently decimated by NATO bombs to halt a genocide that subsequent investigation proved a lie by the Clinton Administration and dutifully amplified in the lap-dog media.

However embarrassing a second death in six days might be, the Hague Inquisition probably breathed a sigh of relief when Slobodan Milosevic was found dead today.

From the very first day, their effort to stage a show trial providing quasi-legal cover for Empire’s nefarious deeds in the Balkans by blaming everything on Milosevic and Serbia (often not making a difference between the two) has been thwarted at every step. Milosevic refused to suicide. He refused to get a lawyer, or even recognize the ICTY’s legitimacy. His cross-examinations exposed dozens of perjured witnesses and demonstrated fully the vacuity of the prosecution’s case. Had he stayed alive, the Tribunal would have faced the embarrassing quandary of having to convict him (and they would have, otherwise their whole raison d’etre would have disappeared) without ever actually proving anything. Dead men tell no tales; they can’t defend themselves from accusations, insinuations, rumors and propaganda. Milosevic may have been beating them at their own game for years, but he finally lost at Last Man Standing.

One of the questions that will surely be asked in the coming days is to what extent is the ICTY responsible for Milosevic’s deteriorating health. As the “trial” went on, Milosevic was getting progressively worse – something his detractors tried to cover up by claims he was “faking” illness to prolong the trial(!). The Inquisition recently denied his request to be transferred to a Russian hospital for treatment, arguing that Dutch doctors were good enough. Obviously, they weren’t.

In the aftermath of Milosevic’s death, CNN is wheeling out one arrogant imperial blowhard after another. Right now is Daniel Serwer, who was preceded by the always entertaining Richard Holbrooke.

As could be expected, they are pushing the “Milosevic was responsible for everything that ever went wrong” line to the hilt. And of course, Holbrooke gravely intoned that Milosevic was right up there with Hitler and Stalin.

All of this media bombast has little to do with Milosevic, and a lot to do with the Western media and power structures, whose reputations and careers are at stake. The coming week is going to see a long and drawn-out public orgy of hatred and slander against everything Serbian. Milosevic’s death is just the catalyst, and anyone who doubts that will have to ponder why has-been Holbrooke used his time on CNN to not just call for but to ORDER that Kosovo and Montenegro be made independent; he also said there are “two more” war criminals who must be apprehended (Karadzic and Mladic), conveniently ignoring another duo, Haradinaj and Ceku over in Kosovo. That’s because they are on the side of The Good, in other words, the West.

Milosevic was caught up in the post-Soviet era break-up of Yugoslavia. Nationalist forces broke up the Yugoslav federation. During 1991–92, Croatia, Slovenia, Macedonia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina seceded from Yugoslavia. Large Serbian minorities in Croatia and in Bosnia objected and claimed the identical right of self-determination to remain in the federation as Croats and Muslims claimed to leave it. Croatian and Bosnian Serbs organized and a war against secession began.

Milosevic could hardly remain a Serbian leader and not support the Serbs. Abraham Lincoln was canonized for invading the South to prevent its secession, but Milosevic was damned for trying to protect Yugoslavia’s territorial integrity. In the end Milosevic accepted secession. In 1995 Milosevic negotiated the Dayton Agreement which ended the war in Bosnia. According to the encyclopedia, Wikipedia, “Milosevic was credited in the West with being one of the pillars of Balkan peace.”

In the following four pieces, we see so called “libertarians” come to the defence of the genocidal thug Milosevic because he was an enemy of the United States. Therefore, in their mind, the enemy of my enemy is a friend, no matter if they are mass murderers or tyrants. There are otherexamples of so-called libertarians acting as apologists for anti-American tyrants. It is time that we as libertarians, classical liberals, small government conservatives, etc. repudiate these people. These people have taken their opposition to American interventionism (some of which that I share) and taken to it to a point where they excuse tyranny and genocide, as long as the tyrant and mass murderer oppose American foreign policy.

We must, as libertarians, debate how we want US foreign policy and what kind of interventionism, if any, are we going to have. We must also be open to those who are both hawkish and dovism on the use of military force. However, we must not open our tent so big that we allow the apologists for tyranny to come on in. To criticize American interventionism is one thing, but to try and spin the enemies of America as good guys and portray them as innocent victims and praising the death of American soldiers are competely different things.

Lew Rockwell and his website’s contributors and “Antiwar”.com should be repudiated and taken out of the company of respectable libertarians for these and otherreasons.

I’m one of the original co-founders of The Liberty Papers all the way back in 2005. Since then, I wound up doing this blogging thing professionally. Now I’m running the site now. You can find my other work at The Hayride.com and Rare. You can also find me over at the R Street Institute.

I don’t follow you Matthew, but I’m willing to listen. Are you arguing that these people who are apologists for Milosevic should not be called on it? That calling them on this is being “blinded by nationalism”?

http://www.louisianalibertarian.com Kevin

Matthew,

You’ve just outed me as a NWO Bushtapo nationalist shill. Even though I opposed the air strikes on Serbia because European boys should have been fighting and dying to stop Milosevic, I wanted to promote the NWO agenda by smearing defenders of the great man, Slobodan Milosevic. He was unfairly oppressed by the US and Europe for wanting to merely slaughter and exile the Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo. We all know we should to try see the inner beauty of tyrants instead of actually opposing them because after all the US is the real tyrant.

Logic like this is why the so called “libertarian left” will never be taken seriously.

Matthew Bryan

I’ll chalk up Kevin’s eagerness to put words in my mouth to the brevity of my original response–for a while.

Nowhere in any of the pieces you cite do the authors come to the defense of Milosevic “because he was an enemy of the United States.” They all condemn US interventionism. You purport to hold anti-interventionist views–as long as it isn’t the good old US of A’s ox being gored, be it in reality or perception. That’s called relativism, something which CATO-fed liberventionists like yourselves supposedly detest.
The masthead at LRC reads, in part, “anti-war”, not “anti-war except when it benefits the government of the United States of America or its satellites.”
If you truly believed in the tenets of the overtly flawed documents you profess such scholarly devotion to on this site, you could not help but conclude George W. Bush to be an “anti-American tyrant”, as well–one far more dangerous to what you seem to believe this country still stands for than some tinpot socialist holed up in the mountains of South America. I have yet to see you make that deduction.

Nowhere do any of these authors explicitly apologize for tyranny. If they do so implicitly, a parallel argument could be made that you do so as well by excusing US aggression against those who do not hew in lockstep to our dictates.
Nowhere do you bother to dispute the argument that the charges against Milosevic might have been at least a little trumped up by an administration eager to divert attention from the putatively less monstrous indiscretions of its Dear Boy.
Roberts’ comparison of Milosevic to Lincoln was not meant as a complimentary one, Kevin. To assert otherwise is either downright ignorant or outright disingenous…at best, either way.
And again the intimation that Mike Rogers praised “the death of American soldiers” is just rank dishonesty. Show me where he says that. Be specific. He was “praising”–prematurely, I might add–the apparent downfall of overwhelming force as a necessarily successful mode of warfare.

Can you positively state without fear of (at least) future contradiction, Kevin, that the Israelis had absolutely no foreknowledge of 9/11? And am I automatically an anti-Semite simply for asking that question? If so, why? Explain to me in something other than irrational, right-wing PC, AIPAC-speak why, please. Refute Raimondo’s arguments and evidence instead of just flinging Likudnik, PC-speak intimations at him, why don’t you? What’s next; he’s a holocaust denier?

As for Tom Palmer, he and most of the other CATOIDS were “outed” long ago as pro-government, “reasonable” libertarians for “gradual change”. Read: Pot-smoking Republicans for the Status Quo. When someone calls him on it, he has nowhere to hide but behind smearing his opponents as anti-Semites and apologists for tyrants. It seems Kevin has learned well at his knee.

http://louisianalibertarian.blogspot.com/ Kevin

Matthew,

“Nowhere in any of the pieces you cite do the authors come to the defense of Milosevic “because he was an enemy of the United States.” They all condemn US interventionism.”

They defend Milosevic by parroting out his propaganda such as the ethnic cleansings never happened, this all a grand conspiracy against Serbia, etc. In other words, they are either dupes or willing propagandists for a mass murderer. It’s one thing to oppose intervention in the Balkans on grounds of it’s not in America’s interests or Serbia was no threat to American national security. It’s another thing entirely to spout out the propaganda of a tyrant that the United States is a t war with, regardless of whether or not you supported the war.

“You purport to hold anti-interventionist views–as long as it isn’t the good old US of A’s ox being gored, be it in reality or perception.”

I’ve never claimed to be anti-interventionist in all circumstances. I only support intervention when the national security of the United States is threatened.

“The masthead at LRC reads, in part, “anti-war”, not “anti-war except when it benefits the government of the United States of America or its satellites.””

Really. When has LRC condemned Palestinian attacks against Israelis or the war between the Russians and Chechens and the other wars all over the world? LRC only seems to have a problem with US and Israeli military actions. If you’re going to claim to be anti-war in your masthead, you’ve got to be anti-war all the time, not hide behind the phrase when it suits your political agenda.

“If you truly believed in the tenets of the overtly flawed documents you profess such scholarly devotion to on this site, you could not help but conclude George W. Bush to be an “anti-American tyrant”, as well–one far more dangerous to what you seem to believe this country still stands for than some tinpot socialist holed up in the mountains of South America. I have yet to see you make that deduction.”

If you disappear in the middle of the night for opposing the government, such has been in Venezuela, I will make that deduction. But to make that deduction, even with the questionable record of the Bush Administration on individual liberty, is not only irresponsible, but diminishes the actions of real tyrants all over the world.

“Nowhere do any of these authors explicitly apologize for tyranny.”

But they don’t condemn it either, in fact, they and try to deny or minimize Milosevic’s tyranny.

“If they do so implicitly, a parallel argument could be made that you do so as well by excusing US aggression against those who do not hew in lockstep to our dictates.”

Other countries can do what they want, as long as they don’t threaten to kill American civilians and seek the weapons to do so (ie. weapons of mass destruction).

“Nowhere do you bother to dispute the argument that the charges against Milosevic might have been at least a little trumped up by an administration eager to divert attention from the putatively less monstrous indiscretions of its Dear Boy.”

The news footage of Milosevic’s and his allies’s death camps in Bosnia and the crowds of refugees streaming out of Kosovo after being expelled by Milosevic’s army and photographic evidence of executions in Kosovo villages by Serbian death squads make my case for me. The allegations of trumped up evidence are not worth my time, just as “revisionist” evidence claiming the Holocaust was a hoax are equally not worthy of a response.

“Roberts’ comparison of Milosevic to Lincoln was not meant as a complimentary one, Kevin. To assert otherwise is either downright ignorant or outright disingenous…at best, either way.”

The difference is that Lincoln could make a moral arguement (ie. the freeing of the slaves) to justify his actions, whereas Milosevic’s sole purpose was the expulsion or murder all of non-Serbs in Yugoslavia and the creation of a Greater Serbia.

“And again the intimation that Mike Rogers praised “the death of American soldiers” is just rank dishonesty. Show me where he says that. Be specific. He was “praising”–prematurely, I might add–the apparent downfall of overwhelming force as a necessarily successful mode of warfare.”

The showing of a picture of a destroyed Nazi tank and a destroyed US vehicle side by side infers praise for the death of the American soldiers since Mike Rogers was comparing the American soldiers to the Nazis.

“Can you positively state without fear of (at least) future contradiction, Kevin, that the Israelis had absolutely no foreknowledge of 9/11?”

The Israelis had as much foreknowledge as the US government, the Russians, the French, the British, and other governments did. In other words, they had an idea an attack was coming, they just didn’t know when and where and didn’t have enough pieces of the puzzle to put it together.

“And am I automatically an anti-Semite simply for asking that question?”

It depends on the context and what you are trying to prove.

“As for Tom Palmer, he and most of the other CATOIDS were “outed” long ago as pro-government, “reasonable” libertarians for “gradual change”. Read: Pot-smoking Republicans for the Status Quo.”

As opposed to the oh so successful all or nothing big “L” libertarians.

Matthew Bryan

The “national security” of the US (there’s that word again–“national”) was never threatened by Milosevic any more than it was by Saddam Hussein. You yellow ribbon types gotta have your bogeymen don’t ya? Can’t go a day without worrying about who’s the national villian du jour.

Plenty of LRC writers have condemned terrorism in ALL of its forms, including suicide bombers, theofascist war whore Christians, and diversionary Democrats. Are you implying that Israel is completely blameless in that conflict?

Perhaps LRC holds the US to a higher standard because the US purports to hold itself to a higher standard. Therefore the US takes the lion’s share of the blame for being a hypocritical, strong-arm bully. Then we all wonder aloud “why do they hate us so?”, with such sincere incredulity.

If I disappear in the middle of the night? How would you know? Under the terms of the Patriot Act (national security again), you wouldn’t. It would be against the law for anyone to tell you so. God bless America. You “reasonable” “libertarians” are always so quick to point out that we have not “yet” become a true police state. How comforting. You are apologists for tyranny in your own way.

Lincoln did make a moral argument for freeing the slaves–farcically. He had no real interest in doing so and was adamantly opposed in the North to the extent that he did. Freeing the slaves was a cynical smokescreen for invading the South, establishing the imperial presidency, and growing the mercantilist, corporatist state.

Oh no! A Nazi tank juxtaposed with an American one. That’s surely specific proof of “praising the deaths of American soldiers”. Straw man. If anything, Rogers is guilty of invoking Godwin’s Law.

As to the success of the big L libertarians–whoever they may be–keep dreaming your little dream of incremental reform, of “changing the system from within”. If it hasn’t yet dawned on you that the ruling class will do ANYTHING to maintain their grip, that they will NEVER allow real, meaningful change from within, then it is you that is laboring under a sad, pitiful illusion. Go cast your corruption sustaining vote for the next libertarian-sheened protofacist Republican coming down the pike. The one who looks so pretty on that campaign flier posed next to his all-American family. He will only steal a little bit more of your liberty–in the name of protecting it of course. It’s all in your best interests, really. He only has your safety and well-being in mind. He’ll defend the “national security” for you! Keep playing by the rules, don’t be “radical” or “unrespectable” and he’ll keep smiling at you while he fucks you.

http://thelibertypapers.org/2005/11/21/who-is-eric/ Eric

And meanwhile you refuse to oppose a true fascist responsible for the mass murder of thousands who had the misfortune of being the wrong ethnic group or religion.

http://louisianalibertarian.blogspot.com/ Kevin

The “national security” of the US (there’s that word again–”national”) was never threatened by Milosevic any more than it was by Saddam Hussein. You yellow ribbon types gotta have your bogeymen don’t ya? Can’t go a day without worrying about who’s the national villian du jour.

I never said Milosevic threatened US national security.

Plenty of LRC writers have condemned terrorism in ALL of its forms, including suicide bombers, theofascist war whore Christians, and diversionary Democrats.

LRC writers usually condemn suicide bombers only to compare them to the other two.

Are you implying that Israel is completely blameless in that conflict?

No, but they certainly share less of the blame than the “Palestinians” who turned down two opportunities for a state, engage in warfare that deliberately targets innocent civilians, and seek to impose the barbaric Sharia law in their territories after expelling all Jews and Christians from their lands.

Perhaps LRC holds the US to a higher standard because the US purports to hold itself to a higher standard. Therefore the US takes the lion’s share of the blame for being a hypocritical, strong-arm bully. Then we all wonder aloud “why do they hate us so?”, with such sincere incredulity.

I’m curious, just who are these poor nations that have been bullied by the US?

If I disappear in the middle of the night? How would you know? Under the terms of the Patriot Act (national security again), you wouldn’t. It would be against the law for anyone to tell you so. God bless America. You “reasonable” “libertarians” are always so quick to point out that we have not “yet” become a true police state. How comforting. You are apologists for tyranny in your own way.

Have you even read the Patriot Act, Matthew? If so, what section calls for you to disappear in the middle of the night?

Lincoln did make a moral argument for freeing the slaves–farcically. He had no real interest in doing so and was adamantly opposed in the North to the extent that he did. Freeing the slaves was a cynical smokescreen for invading the South, establishing the imperial presidency, and growing the mercantilist, corporatist state.

The South seceded to defend slavery, not to oppose the “imperial presidency, merchantilism, and the corporatist state”. You can read South Carolina’s ordinance of secession for yourself:

The right of property in slaves was recognized by giving to free persons distinct political rights, by giving them the right to represent, and burthening them with direct taxes for three-fifths of their slaves; by authorizing the importation of slaves for twenty years; and by stipulating for the rendition of fugitives from labor.

We affirm that these ends for which this Government was instituted have been defeated, and the Government itself has been made destructive of them by the action of the non-slaveholding States. Those States have assume the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions; and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution; they have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery; they have permitted open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of the citizens of other States. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection.

For twenty-five years this agitation has been steadily increasing, until it has now secured to its aid the power of the common Government. Observing the forms of the Constitution, a sectional party has found within that Article establishing the Executive Department, the means of subverting the Constitution itself. A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that that “Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free,” and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction.

This sectional combination for the submersion of the Constitution, has been aided in some of the States by elevating to citizenship, persons who, by the supreme law of the land, are incapable of becoming citizens; and their votes have been used to inaugurate a new policy, hostile to the South, and destructive of its beliefs and safety.

Oh no! A Nazi tank juxtaposed with an American one. That’s surely specific proof of “praising the deaths of American soldiers”. Straw man. If anything, Rogers is guilty of invoking Godwin’s Law.

If you believe that the Nazis were evil and deserved to die, you must draw the same conclusion with American soldiers after seeing the Nazi and American vehicle next to each other.

John Newman

Kevin said:
I’m curious, just who are these poor nations that have been bullied by the US?

What part of my anti-nationalist rants have you not understood? I began this little misadventure with a simple, one sentence statement condemning nationalism. I suppose I should have been more explicit. Milosevic was a thug. Happy? All politicians are thugs at heart, with precious few exceptions. “Public service” is a euphemism for “I like telling people what to do.” It’s just a matter of degree.

Perhaps the LRC writers were insufficient in their condemnation. I’ll grant that. Apologists for tyranny they are not, however. Why didn’t you answer my contention that you are, for the reasons stated, I wonder?

The Southern secession was explicitly allowed by the Constitution. No, the South did not secede to oppose the imperial presidency, etc. I didn’t say that it did. Your straw men are getting tiresome. Defending slavery was a secondary, economic, consderation to that of defending states’ rights. Slavery would eventually have collapsed of its own weight anyway.
Lincoln destroyed the basis of the country to save “the Union”. His continuing reign amongst the sheeple as “greatest American President” is quite telling, when you think about it. He shut down newspapers, exiled a dissenting Congressman, jailed dissenters, invaded sovereign states, implicitly allowed the pillage of said states, ushered in the rise of corporate welfare, ad nauseum. That the dupus Americanus would idolize such a putrid example of human indecency says all one needs to know about our current condition. By this standard, Bush should be due for American sainthood any day now.
(Here I will innoculate with a preemptory disclaimer to ward off Kevin and Eric’s inevitable conclusion that this line of argument makes me an apologist for slavery: I believe slavery in all of its forms is vile and repugnant, including ownership of the individual by government, private citizen or otherwise. This includes taxation, participatory democracy, and all other sops to “self-government” thrown to the populace to assure its fealty to the state and continued illusionment toward the notion of “freedom” as a commodity distributed by said state.)

Mr. Newman:
Thanky for taking up for me. I wouldn’t waste much more time here, were I you. These guys are hopeless state puppets. No more hits from me.